Wisdom: a prototype scalable operating system

Wisdom is an experimental scalable parallel operating system designed to make the use of processor arrays straightforward and efficient in providing a general-purpose computing environment. The objective of the research was to decide on a scalable architecture and to design an operating system that could efficiently use the architecture chosen, regardless of the number of processors present, and correctly reallocate resources (processing, communication, and others) as the size of the network changed (either up or down). The idea was that a computer could be constructed from simple building blocks (typically, a processor, memory, and some communication links) that could be combined to form a computer of the power needed for a given site or application. The results from the prototype show that it should be possible to build a system which can be scaled from a single processor to a few hundred processors, and perhaps beyond, if enough hardware support can be provided. A brief overview of Wisdom is given, and the results so far obtained from the prototype are presented and explained